Meditation relieves pain better than medication.
This was shown by a study conducted by scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Just a few minutes of meditation a day is enough to forget about pain. Apparently, meditation can influence brain function.
After analyzing the data of MRI scans of the brains of the volunteers, the scientists found that relaxation techniques and breathing exercises have an analgesic effect. In the study participants who practiced meditation, the intensity of physical pain after some time decreased by 27%, and emotional - by 47%.
According to researchers, four daily meditation sessions lasting about 20 minutes can relieve pain in people in hospitals. However, so far the researchers have studied only healthy people. But they hope that meditation will help those suffering from chronic pain as well.
In recent years, doctors have increasingly made discoveries related to meditation and its effects on the human body. What was known to the Indian yogis from time immemorial is beginning to reach the modern world.
So, in 2012, it was proved that transcendental meditation can halve the risk of heart attack. A series of experiments was carried out. In the group of heart patients who practiced transcendental meditation twice a day for 20 minutes, the incidence of stroke, heart attack, or death from any cause was 48% lower than in the control group.
At the same time, the members of the control group did not stay idle, but attended a "health school" where healthy eating and physical education are promoted.
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Those who meditated also had lower blood pressure, saying they were less stressed and less annoyed. Moreover, it turned out that the more regularly the patients meditated, the lower the mortality rate. Experts believe that transcendental meditation involves the “pharmacy” of our body, so that it repairs and debugs itself.
Meditation also helps to maintain the volume of the brain's gray matter, which contains neurons. This conclusion was reached in 2015 by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, who studied the relationship between age and gray matter in two groups of people.
Scientists compared the brains of 50 people who have meditated for years and 50 people who have never done it. Gray matter loss with age was observed in both groups, but to a lesser extent in meditators.